


Calculations

by lumateranlibrarian



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, and, depending on how much you read into it, of McCree as well, of Symmetra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22089076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumateranlibrarian/pseuds/lumateranlibrarian
Summary: Satya is done with Vishkar. She's done with their lies. And she's done with pretending that their sins aren't - at least partly - her own.
Relationships: Jesse McCree & Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Calculations

Agent McCree will not stop picking at his armor, and it is driving Satya to  _ madness. _

His fingernails clip and scrape across the edges of his chestplate. Satya watches as he tries to wedge his large fingers into a slim groove, watches as he frowns with the realization that the angle isn’t going to work and contorts his arm to try again. He, like her, is covered from head to toe in a layer of fine grit. The color has ruined his cape-like serape, and has turned his hat from a rich suede into a dirty, felted color somewhere between grey and brown.

It is Satya’s fault, of course, and she cannot help but feel bitterness overwhelm the thrill of an otherwise successful mission. The dust on her skin is thick and suffocating. A furious scream is bubbling somewhere in her gut, but to take out her frustrations on her fellow operative would be useless. She wants to scrub viciously at her skin until it is flushed and raw and meticulously clean. The Orca is not equipped with a shower or similar apparatus, so it will have to wait until they return to Gibraltar. She carefully breathes in through her nose, and out in a slow stream through her mouth. 

Agent McCree grunts, and her eyes flick to him as he manages to successfully pry away a small sliver of concrete that is coated in what looks like lubricating oil. He grimaces, and tosses it onto the floor.

Satya clenches her fists, and forcefully relaxes her hands over her thighs.

Overwatch had been charged to infiltrate a Vishkar storage site, filled from wall to wall with blue-blinking servers. Naturally, Satya had been assigned to the mission. Tracer, she supposed, was inevitable, given that they needed a pilot for the Orca. She had argued against Lúcio, the Brazilian rebel, as their attending support - his unique brand of tactical medicine was totally unsuited to stealth objectives. But Agent McCree’s assignment to the roster was the most surprising, at least until she had inquired and been informed that he had over a decade of experience in covert ops through Blackwatch, the doubly-disgraced branch of the Overwatch of old.

They had planned for the building to come down from the very beginning. It was misfortune and a split-second miscalculation that resulted in Satya having to sprint out of the station mere moments before the collapse. Tracer and Lúcio had been out of range, but McCree had not been as fortunate. Now, they both pay the price.

Satya can admit that while she would not rather be  _ dead, _ the combination of dust caked heavily onto her skin, the relentless hum of the Orca’s engines, and the grating  _ skrit-skrit-skrit _ of Agent McCree’s nails is making her wish she had been left unconscious by the blast.

It could be worse.

At least McCree is not using his metal hand. The sound would be horrific, screeching and sharp like - 

Satya frowns. 

She stares at McCree where he slouches. Satya mentally reviews the last twelve hours, now muddled somewhat by adrenaline and the simple passage of time. She squints and gathers additional details by the way of his posture, the fixed position of his prosthetic hidden beneath his  _ serape, _ and the faint but visible tremors along the lines of his metal arm that are jarringly discordant from the vibration from the body of the orca.

Satya clears her throat. “Agent McCree.”

He glances up. His face, beneath his hat, is streaked with sweat and grime. Satya forces herself not to recoil.

“What can I do for you, Miss Vatswani?”

It occurs to her that a man such as McCree would be well used to hiding his physical discomfort. Being covered in dust and dirt is probably not an uncommon experience for him. That does not necessarily means he enjoys it any more that she does.

She begins unbuckling herself from her seat.

“Your prosthetic is malfunctioning. Will you permit me to examine it?”

They’ve discussed this, in passing, having little in common save for the shared loss of a vital limb. Satya has learned that the prosthetic is a relic from his time after the fall of the first Overwatch, received somewhere mysterious without access to the cutting edge technology she herself is used to. He is almost defensive about the quality of the piece, and treats it with a modicum of morbid sentiment as well as utility. Satya has since learned not to impress upon him the use of upgrading to a more current model, one that will place less stress on his shoulder. If it were up to her, she would replace the battery pack with a kinetic engine. The prosthetic casing could be similarly colored and patterned with a skull - she’s not averse to a bit of  _ personality, _ on unique pieces. It is worth suggesting later.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I know what the problem is, just left my fine tools back at the base.”

His dismissal is hurtful, surprisingly so, and her fingers still on her harness, halfway undone.

“I insist,” she insists.

“Ain’t necessary.”

“I will fetch Lúcio from the bridge, if you would prefer another mechanic.”

He squints at her. His nonchalance shifts into something a little more calculating. 

Good. Satya  _ understands _ calculations.

“Now, there’s no need to trouble yourself on my account,” he says, in his slow, characteristic American drawl.

Satya knows a test when she is given one. Vishkar presented her with plenty, growing up.

“Your arm is malfunctioning, where it was not before I entered the compound.” This, she is sure of. “It appears to be as covered in debris as the rest of you, and therefore likely sustained some sort of damage from the blast. It was error on my part that we were both so close to the compound as it fell.” Error in the form of a poorly-placed teleporter, a sloppy tactical miscalculation made in the heat of the moment and high on the thrill of retaliating against the Vishkar corporation for all that it had done to the world. “I have no doubt I am at least somewhat responsible for the discomfort you are currently experiencing.”

The words fall from her lips heavier than she thought they would. She had been more than willing to carry out Vishkar’s vision, not so very long ago.

Agent McCree blinks a few times.

“When you put it like that, how can I say no?”

Satya nods sharply, rather than respond aloud, and shrugs out of the rest of her safety harness.

She settles herself across the aisle in the seat to McCree’s immediate left. Carefully, she arranges her legs so that she can pull his prosthetic into her lap. Sure enough, there is a jarring, whirring tremor emanating from the metal that makes her head start to ache and her stomach swell into her throat. She swallows tightly.

It is the work of a few deft movements to summon a hardlight screwdriver from her own prosthetic palm. She quickly goes to work on popping the dense metal casing open.

“You said you know what the problem is?”

“Feels like a piece of rock made its way into the proximal wrist cavity,” he admits. “Probably more grit than gravel, if you get my meaning.”

Satya hums, and shines a light from her tip of her little finger into the inner workings of the metal arm.

The machinery is anachronistic, much like the man it belongs to. However, it is not quite as difficult as Satya predicted to appreciate it. Despite the fact that the fine wires and circuit boards are at least a decade and a half out of date, the technology reminds Satya of when she was a child, being taken through Vishkar’s vaults to see the technology of old so as to better appreciate the corporation’s superior innovation in the present. Still, the basic training she received so very long ago holds firm, and with her visor she is able to quickly locate the problem - a small piece of debris, no more than a few millimeters wide, wedged into the main rolling joint of the wrist, just underneath the base of the thumb.

She converts the screwdriver into a set of finely-tipped pliers with a quick twist of her hand. Before diving in, she hesitates. “Are there pain sensors anywhere that I should be aware of?”

McCree snorts. “Nothin’ that fancy. Pressure sensors all along the way, though, and there’s a temperature gauge on the palm there, and the finger pads.”

Simple enough. Satya files away the information, and carefully readjusts her grip on his arm. The pebble may be stubborn, but  _ she _ is Satya Vaswani, and not about to be bested by a rock in a cowboy’s wrist. 

The absurdity of the statement is not lost on her. It almost makes her laugh.

It takes the better part of thirty minutes to pry the offending particle free. At one point, McCree offers to spit in the joint to lubricate it, and she glares up at him with all the scorn the suggestion deserves. The bastard laughs, and Satya mutters in a language she’s almost certain he doesn’t know that she’ll find the joint oil and shove it up his ass instead. Something in the tone of her voice must come through, and he laughs even harder. 

When she finally manages to extract the pebble, McCree’s entire posture changes. The deep, tense hunch of his shoulders relaxes into a smooth and balanced line. She pretends not to notice the sigh of relief that slips past his lips as the tremors from his arm immediately cease. 

“Thank you kindly. You can just toss that on the floor, there,” he tells her, eyes closed but lips twitching mischievously.

She glares at him, balances the sticky piece of grit on the tip one long, chrome finger, and wipes it off on his  _ serape. _

McCree’s eyes fly open with a scandalized gasp that seems genuinely horrified.

This time, Satya fails to hold back a giggle, which swells into an outright laugh.

The two of them are covered in dust, sweat, and grime. They are exhausted and uncomfortable, and undoubtedly McCree is more irritable than he is letting on if she herself is anything to go by. And yet, somehow, this fool of a cowboy is still managing to care about the aesthetic of his  _ serape. _

It gives Satya a strange, illogical sense of hope for the state of the world, as she re-affixes the protective plating of McCree’s arm with a reluctant smile on her face.

“The next time you are troubled like this, do not hesitate to come to someone who can help. Especially if there is someone who  _ can _ help,” she lectures.

“Yes, ma’am,” he promises, a foolish grin on his face.

For good measure, she jabs the blunt end of the hardlight screwdriver in his direction threateningly. 

He holds up his palms. “All right, all right! No funny business.”

“I’m never funny.”

He tips his hat.

“Beg to differ, ma’am.”

Ma’am. It’s an improvement over  _ Miss. _

She’ll take it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the read, all - this fic was a labor of love, and a long, long time in coming!


End file.
